CANADA. Shaw Cable TV. Add additional Arris Portal in basement.....free?

[Barty1884]

Hi all, absolutely no idea where I should post this thread, so I'm trying under Home Theatre.

I'm in Canada, and have Shaw Cable.
There's a Arris Gateway HDPVR in the basement, which feeds 3 "portal" boxes at each tv.
4 Rooms currently have Coax cables running to wall outlets (the master bedroom, the two additional bedrooms & the living room).

The setup at the Gateway in the basement, Coax cable feeds a 3 way splitter that runs upstairs to feed the living room, master & one bedroom. I've been able to switch between the two bedrooms when we moved the set up (found which cable fed bedroom #1, disconnected & connect the spare wire - which was feeding bedroom #2).

Basement: Gateway HDPVR & Spare TV (no coax cable run currently.

Main Floor: Master, Bedroom #1 & Living Room (all coax cables/wall outlets/connected to gateway splitter) & Bedroom #2 (coax cable, but not connected to splitter)

Our basement is undeveloped, but we do have a TV set up down there. I'm curious, if I found a 4-way splitter.....could I run an additional coax cable from the splitter to another portal (assuming I could find one online)? Would this simply work? Or am I missing something? Would Shaw need to "authorize" or activate something?

I guess at that point, do 5-way splitters exist? That way there would be cable feeding the spare bedroom also.

 

[Quixit]

You can install a 4-way splitter, Shaw would have to add your new box to the account and you'd be charged for an extra outlet. The boxes are digital and authorized based on their hardware ID, all programming is sent encrypted so if a box is not authorized you don't get anything. (short of cloning one box's hardware ID to multiple, which is illegal.)

 

[getochkn]

I'm pretty sure they can support 4 portals per gateway box. In my house, we wanted 6 rooms hooked up to a "whole home PVR", but they had to give us 2 gateways and 3 portals per gateway as there is a limit on the box. They also had to do all kind of filters and such to get everything so that the correct portal could connect to the right gateway.

Ditched all that and cut the cord and saved $200 a month though. lol.

 

[Barty1884]

Ah. Thanks for the clarification Quixit.

Figured it couldn't/shouldn't be as easy as I thought it might be, but I know sometimes things get overlooked as consumers generally take what companies like Shaw say as gospel where it may not be strictly true (ie you have to buy a box from them & have it activated etc). Good to know about authorization & hardware IDs etc.

Thanks!

 

[Barty1884]

Ditched all that and cut the cord and saved $200 a month though. lol.

Yeah, contemplating cutting the cord myself. Got my first Android TV box.....and it's pretty much bricked already, so working on fixing that.

Once I understand more about them and can get them working reliably, there's a good chance Shaw will take a hike! (I'll take Telus's better internet package at that time).

 

[getochkn]

It's a bit of a challenge to setup a HTPC, either Android or Windows, and if you are used to channel surfing and stuff, it's a transition, but most people don't watch 99% of the hundreds of channels they pay for anyways. Shomi is available in Canada now, Netflix, Hulu, a VPN to access Netflix/hulu US, and you can watch a fair amount of stuff.

 

[Barty1884]

It's a bit of a challenge to setup a HTPC, either Android or Windows, and if you are used to channel surfing and stuff, it's a transition, but most people don't watch 99% of the hundreds of channels they pay for anyways. Shomi is available in Canada now, Netflix, Hulu, a VPN to access Netflix/hulu US, and you can watch a fair amount of stuff.

Absolutely. I'm going to install Kodi on my main rig & see how my girlfriend feels about it.
I'm all for it. Between Netflix & a lot of the streaming addons I think we'd do just fine.
(I used the box briefly and Kodi seemed decent, it just happened to come bloated as all heck with probably every addon ever. Starting from scratch and picking up a cheap donor computer I think will be the way forward for me)

 

[Quixit]

Yeah, I dropped my TV provider in September and when solely with my Nexus Player (an Android TV device). It runs Kodi, Netflix (in HD), Youtube, Crackle, Crunchyroll and pretty much anything else I've tried. I used to have a HTPC, but since I bought the Nexus Player it's managed to play everything I've thrown at it. I wasn't actually expecting it to play 1080p H264 at full framerate, but it does. I'm saving $100/month. The best plus is that it doesn't have the sort of problems with updates, drivers and codecs the HTPC had. It's just install app and go and it updates itself. Unlike the sorta dicey offbrand not Android TV, but Android on a TV boxes it's a lot easier to use.